Museo del Prado

General 10&euro, 5€ ($1.70), students under 25, Mon – Sat from 6pm to 8pm. Do not pay children under 18 and disabled.

Schedule

From Monday to Sunday : 9am to 8pm.

eMail

museo.nacional@prado.mcu.es

El Prado museum is one of the most important in the world. It is located in the Villanueva building and it was inaugurated on November 19th, 1819 as the “Museo Real de Pinturas” with only 311 paintings; but later, collections from other museums were passed onto el Prado. In 1868, Isabella II changed its name to “Museo del Prado”. Nowadays, it has an impressive number of pieces but due to the lack of space, only 1150 items are exposed. Del Prado do not only has more than 7900 paintings, it also has sculptures, draws, coins, medals, etc.

As we mentioned before, the lack of room is a problem that affects the museum; for this reason, several enlargements have been done to the principal building to amplify it. However, the created space proved not to be enough; so, other buildings had to be constructed. The Jeronimo

But even though, the space was not enough so other buildings were constructed. The Jeronimo’s building, commonly known as the “Cubo de Moenos” is next to the principal building and it is connected to the principal building through an underground tunnel. The other building is “El Cason del Buen Retiro” or simply “El Cason.” It has been the study center of the museum since 2009; it is dedicated to the formation of new art professionals. It also holds the Library of the museum. The third building is Aldeasa, it holds the museum offices. Palacios de los Aguila and Salon de los Reinos are the two new acquisitions of the museum. The first one will work as a deposit, while the second one will be used for temporal expositions. They are being remodeled and they will be inaugurated within the next years. All these buildings together form the “Campus Prado”.

El Prado has the finest collection of pieces among all the museums. Most of its pieces belonged to the royalty and to rich people and were done especially for them. El Prado has the biggest collection of: el Greco, Velazques, Tiziano, El Bosca, Patinir, Rubens, Ribera, Eduardo Rosales and Goya. The last one has the biggest number of pieces: 133.